I'm proud that my son is a man and not a male looking for someone to use and get over on and I set the example for him.

Simply low self-esteem

Letters to the Bishop

Bishop:

After reading your last week's Bishop Speaks column, I had to write you and share the experience I had with my twenty-one-year-old daughter after she also read your column.

Your column opened her up to talk to me and share with me why she had her twenty-year-old boyfriend move in with her. I didn't judge her nor try and talk when she was talking and believe me that was very hard for me because my daughter knows better. She has seen her father go to work, pay the bills, buy the food for the house, treat me, his wife, like a princess as well as buy beautiful things for our only daughter. Our daughter has seen a man and what a man does when she sees her father. Why she has settled for a “male” is shocking to me and it hurts her father so much that we both have pulled away from her a little in visiting her and buying things for her apartment.

Bishop, my daughter is a second year college student, has a nice one bedroom apartment close by her campus, she works a fulltime job and keeps gas in her car that her father and I bought her when she started school. Even now that it's summer time she continues to go to school and not take a break and she continues to work five days a week full time.

She let's her boyfriend, who is not working or looking for a job, take her to school or she walks and he picks her up from school and takes her to work and picks her up. While she's at work or school he eats, sleeps at her place and drives around picking up his different friends and does nothing. He's not even looking for work.

When I asked my daughter to explain to me why she is doing this and disrespecting herself she simply said, "I love him and he's going to change."

Bishop, my daughter is not only beautiful on the outside, she's smart, but cannot see she's getting played and used by this loser she's with. Her father says very little to her and her boyfriend stays clear of her father.

Your column last week, I'm sure gave her something to think about, and I really came to realize that low self esteem has nothing to do with ones looks on the outside, but it's what's happening in their thinking process. I hope and pray that our daughter wakes up and sees what's happening and send this loser out the door.

Bishop Moultry:

I got a Call and Post Newspaper for my best friend last week and after she read your column, she called me laughing but also crying because she said she saw herself being one of those girls in the group circle that you sat with last week.

I'm twenty-one-years-old and my best friend is nineteen. She's been dating a guy who is twenty-one and he's been using her for a least a month now after she let him move in with her. I see things are starting to turn as she told me they are not talking much and she's tired of taking care of him. He's doing nothing to better himself and she only looks forward to sex from him and he knows this. Your article, in a nice way, sent a strong message to young women and how young thugs who want nothing in life will look for beautiful girls with low self-esteem, who will settle with them and take care of them. Both her and me work and she sees my boyfriend never asking me for money or trying to move in with me because he has his own place and he's in school like I am.

Bishop, I just wanted to say please continue to hit where it hurts because you would not believe how many girls our age are dealing with low self-esteem and settling for less but dating losers just for sex.

I don't know if I said too much but I just wanted to share this with you and say thanks to you for all you do for the Community.

Bishop Moultry:

My twenty-two-year-old son knows what a man is because I've not only taught him well but I think I've been a great example to him as his father. Also his mother has often shared with him what to look out for when dealing with the girls he meets and dates.

But Bishop, you would not believe how many times girls have asked my son to move in with them. He always tells them "no thanks." My son has his own car, a job, in school for his first year college and on the basketball team. He's a good looking kid and he often tells the different girls to stop buying him things and that he has his own money in his pockets.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that these girls set themselves up to be used and played or preyed on and taken advantage of. The girl my son is dating now often asks if he needs her to buy him anything and he tells her all the time, "no, I'm cool." On Fathers Day when my son took me, his mother and his girlfriend out to dinner and his girlfriend offered to help him pay for the entire meal he said, "I got it." You know what his girlfriend said? "You should have been a White man ‘cause brothers don't do this." My wife told her that's how we raised him.

I'm proud that my son is a man and not a male looking for someone to use and get over on and I set the example for him.

You can e-mail the bishop at bishopspeaks@aol.com or write him at 969 E. 140th St. Cleveland, Ohio 44110. Check out the Bishop on Facebook under Bishop Prince J. Moultry or the church website at www.intouchforchrist.com. Call the church (216) 761-7100 and visit the church each Sunday morning 11 a.m. off 140th in St. Clair in the heart of the Collinwood Community directly across the street from the Job Site Campus.